Does this child look like a hell raiser to you?
I was special.
Really special.
Like not-right-in-the-head special.
Though, I don’t remember too many of these incidents, Mom insisted that she would question my intelligence and whether I’d make it through life in one piece.
I had a thing for Band Aids. All my dolls had Band Aids. All my stuffed animals had Band Aids. My Barbies had Band Aids (you know, the real little ones that don’t fit around or on anything that small?). Mom thought, “Oh, how sweet, she’s probably going to be a nurse someday.” (that would have been my moms proudest moment). That or a decathlon runner. At the age of about 3, I was told that while waiting for my bath to fill I would run back and forth with the metal Band Aid box (remember those!?) from the bathroom down one end of the hallway to my parents room on the other end (it wasn’t a long hallway). Back and forth I’d run (I told you I was a hyper active little shit). Well, on my steady gallop back to the bathroom I tripped on the marble threshold, fell, and the box of Band Aids went flying….into the bathtub. Mom told me it took about 2 days for all those Band Aids to dry out.
I honestly think she knew what was going to happen. She just wanted to see if she was right.
Do you remember nose drops? This was before Afrin and any of those other nasal sprays. It was a little brown glass bottle with a dropper top. You’d plunk a couple drops in your nostril and voila! instant rush of air to the brain! Again, Mom had high hopes for me. “Oh, she’s going to be chemist!”. Ummm, not so much. She told me about the time she opened my curtain in my room and found one of these nose drop bottles. Inside, there was a broken up oral (maybe butt…she always took my temp from “the other side”) thermometer stirred in with the nose drops. Yeah, it freaked her out alittle because of the fact that I took a thermometer and broke it into little pieces.
Like I said, I have NO recollection of doing any of these things.
This last one may account for the reasons I did such inane things. Peter Pan was a big deal in the 60′s. I guess I was a very impressionable child at the age of 5. I didn’ t understand harnesses and wires and stage theatrics. Wow. How can Mary Martin fly!? If Mary could do it, why couldn’t I? So, one day while mom was doing her court reporting (she was one of the first Work At Home Moms) in her little office, I decided to do a swan dive off our piano bench. I still have the scar on the top of my head. She told me I was a very good girl in the ER.
I remember flying a kite in the field across the street from my house one day. There were a couple of us flying kites. Well, they all went home to watch “The Monkees”. They reeled in their kites, and left. OMG, I couldn’t miss “The Monkees”! I didn’t realize how high my kite was. I mean it was UP THERE! I kept reelin’ the string in and it didn’t seem to be coming any closer to me. I started to panic. I thought “Should I just let it go?”. No, I couldn’t do that. Luckily, a person who lived in my neighborhood saw me, probably knew what a spaz I was, saw the look of total despair on my face, stopped and helped me get my kite down. I do remember thanking him repeatedly.
My brother wasn’t a gem either.
I remember him telling me once while fixing his Corgie James Bond car he had James in lips to free up his hands (why he didn’t just put him on the ground is beyond me) and “GULP”…..down and out went James. We still have the car minus 007.
My brother was alittle chunky. Ok…he was fat. My father made it possible for us to have some swings at the house at the lake. Two trees just happened to be perfect distance apart. So up went two 2X4′s bolted to the trees, hung some chain, put two seats in and we were out of their hair for at least 1/2 hour. My brother liked swinging high (yeah, you know where this is going, right?), I tried but I didn’t have as much strength to get up there like he did. Higher and higher he went, while I pumped with everything I had to beat him. All of a sudden I feel my side of the set jerk to the right, the 2×4′s nearly hitting me and my brother is now Peter Pan. Minus the harness. Face plant city, baby! You could hear the crying from across the lake. I chuckled I think. Or am I chuckling now?
Speaking of chuckling….my brother and I DID-NOT get along. Especially as we got older. He was always the dominating one at the dinner table. Mom and dad always laughed at his comments or remarks at me. During one of his comic sessions during dinner which consisted of some sort of meat, starch and vegetable which was a salad at this time (mom always made sure we had a balanced meal), numb nuts reaches for the Caesar Salad Dressing, Pfeiffer brand if I recall, starts shaking it WITH THE TOP TOWARDS HIM and two shakes into it “SPLAAAAAAAT”….the top flys off and he’s now covered in Caesar Salad Dressing! Who’s got the last laugh now you schmuck!?
Ah, childhood memories. Some of which I would rather forget, but I do get a chuckle out of occasionally. There have also been some dumb things I did as a grown up, too, but we won’t go there!
Would love to hear some of the anecdotes from your childhood so I won’t I think I was the only looney bird as a kid. Misery loves company!
